Well summer is flying by and the music just keeps on coming! Had a super great gig with Steve Kenny, Brandon Wozniak and Babatunde Lea a couple weeks ago. Hope to play more with those guys. Zacc Harris Quartet was stellar at Studio Z last week. I highly recommend the All Originals Series curated by Steve Kenny – go check it out and support the cutting edge of improvised music in these parts. Many of the groups I’m involved with are performing at the series and this Thursday is Red Planet!

August highlights:

Wednesday July 30th

Sophia Shorai Quartet @ Dakota 

7pm  Foodie Night. Bring a friend and enjoy the specials. No, not the ska band, the food and drink specials. Chris Lomheim on piano. Greg Schutte on drums. CB on bass and the lovely and talented Sophia Shorai on vocals.

Thursday July 31st
Red Planet @ Studio Z
8pm  $10  All Ages
Dean Magraw – guitar
Jay Epstein – drums
CB – bass
Red Planet performs as part of the All Originals Jazz Series. We’ll be presenting a unique blend of our original compositions and extended improvisations for this concert. The logical extension of our obsession with Coltrane is to expand our sound and so we hope you’ll come along with us as we ‘make this stuff up’ for you live, in real time, ONCE. Thanks to Steve Kenny and Zeitgeist for getting the funding together for this concert series. All the info is here: All Originals Series

Saturday Aug 2nd

Dennis Gonzalez Quintet @ Studio Z

8pm  $10  All Ages
D. Gonzalez – trumpet
Brandon Wozniak and Nathan Hanson – saxophones
Pete Hennig and CB – drums and bass
Mark your calendars. You will not want to miss this show. Crow With No Mouth has been presenting shows for a few years now and is consistently bringing in the most beautiful and under-rated artists in the world, right to your back door. Please check out this series!!!
Dennis Gonzalez is a rare American treasure who’s music blends everything together to create a masterful and brilliant sound. Gonzalez lives in Dallas and has only played (to the best of my knowledge) one other time in Mpls/St. Paul. So I’m really not kidding when I say this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to hear a very underrated and underground master improvisor in a setting with 4 of the Twin Cities finest. 

We’ll be playing songs from Dennis’ Hymn Cycle including pieces dedicated to Julius Hemphill, Albert Ayler and Tomasz Stanko. I hope you can join us because this is going to be outstanding!

Monday Aug 4th

Chris Thomson Quartet w/ Jt & Chris Bates & Bill Bergmann @ Icehouse

9:30pm  $8  21+

Come hear some fantastic friends playing music from across the jazz spectrum. CT and the Bates Bros have been playing with Bill Bergmann (gtr) for a number of years. This is a rare chance to hear them in a club setting. 

Tuesday Aug 5th

Bill Simenson Big Band @ Jazz Central

8:30pm  $10  All Ages

Friday Aug 8th

Atlantis Quartet @ Grand Kabaret in New Ulm, MN

AQ travels a little bit out of town to play a great concert series. Details here.

Tuesday Aug 12th

Framework @ Black Dog – We’ve been recording with guests. We’ll play trio tonight.

7:00pm  $5-10  All Ages  (Chris Olson, Jay Epstein, CB)

Friday Aug 15th

Axis Mundi @ Hell’s Kitchen

6-9pm  FREE  All Ages

Glen Helgeson, Dave Stanoch, Gary Schulte and CB bring you the world jazz grooves.

Thursday Aug 28th

Atlantis Quartet @ All Originals Jazz Series @ Studio Z

8-10pm  $10  All Ages

In the last week of August I’ll be playing a Tour de Twin Towns with local guitar legend David Martin and Portland based guitarist/luthier Mike Doolin. They have a new album out that features so many guitar tones and styles that I’m hard pressed to categorize the music into one genre or another. I’ll be playing electric bass on all of these gigs and my good friend Pete Hennig will be drumming. Look out for performances at Icehouse, 318, Black Dog and Jazz Central. I’ll provide more detail as we get closer to these shows.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to playing for you soon!

-CB